High End 2016: A speaker for a Grammy? Meet the Bauta.

Jacek Gawlovsky might not ring a bell for you, or me for the matter, as I do not follow-up closely the pro audio scene, but he is a much respected sound engineer, with a Grammy award and several gold and platinum records on his palmarés. While speaking to him, it became clear that while at work he realized that the current offering for studio monitors, and speakers in general, was not quite satisfying, so he designed one that fits his taste.

Enter the Bauta, a tall, sandglassed shaped, massive 4 way speaker system or better a 3 way speaker in D’Appolito configuration with an added active subwoofer for a total of 200kgr. Quality parts, exquisite finish and most importantly coherent sound were my notes for this room. Speaking with the designer, I was informed that the Bauta is time- and phase-aligned, the crossover points are at 150 and 1900Hz; the lower impedance point reaches 4Ohms which translates into a demanding beast. The two Accuphase 200 class A mono amplifiers seemed more than adequate to drive it comfortably to decent levels, though the brochure specifies at least 300Watts/channel as the starting ground for power requirements.

What impressed me the most about this setup was that it handled very well both big scale recordings (something to be expected from two 10’ woofers along with a 15’ sub), but it also behaved very well with female voices, mostly thanks to the excellent pin point imaging it created along with a detailed yet not fatiguing upper mid spectrum. At 125.000euros it is not cheap, especially given it comes from an unknown Polish company, but something tells me it will gain fame in the future.

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